J.D. Salinger’s classic 1951 short story, “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” features Salinger’s favorite character, Seymour Glass, only to kill him off several pages later. The story begins in a posh hotel room by the sea, where we hear Glass’s wife on the phone with her mother discussing Seymour’s mental health. From there, we head to the beach, where Seymour hangs out with a girl of about four named Sybil, telling her stories about the elusive “banana fish.” The story ends with Seymour returning to his hotel room and shooting himself in the head.

Seymour Glass, or, as Sybil calls him, “see more glass,” is a hotly contested short-story character in American literature, which gives his highly transparent name even more irony. People can’t seem to agree on what the guy is like, why he always hangs out with little kids, or more importantly why he decides to kill himself. There are three main theories about it.

Theory one: Seymour is a banana fish. Not really. In the description he gives Sybil, banana fish are fish that swim in holes and gorge themselves on so many bananas that they get stuck and die. According to some, this is Seymour’s unorthodox but apt metaphor for the materialistic consumer mentality of post-World War II American society; not that we know anything about it today. This, of course, begs the question, what does Seymour’s suicide mean? Is going back to your fancy hotel room and killing yourself the human equivalent of diving down a banana hole and eating yourself to death? That might explain why Sybil thinks she sees a banana fish; she could be talking about Seymour. Or perhaps Seymour’s suicide is a way of overcoming the material world: abandoning it entirely.

Theory two: Seymour is a pervert. Yeah, all that friendship, swimming, and storytelling is just his way of approaching little girls. You’ll notice, for example, that Seymour grabs Sybil’s ankles when she’s lying on the beach, and then again when he pushes her through the water. When he goes so far as to kiss the bottom of her foot, even four-year-old Sybil is shocked enough to yell, “Hey!” probably remembering something he heard in preschool about a “red light touch.” Embarrassed and/or frustrated, Seymour immediately ends his play date, returns to the hotel, and commits suicide in shame. The fact that sexual abuse is an ambiguous but recurring theme in other JD Salinger works, especially Catcher in the Rye, supports the possibility that something is wrong with Seymour’s libido.

Theory Three: Everyone’s Gone Too PC A touch isn’t necessarily inappropriate, a kiss isn’t always sexual, adults and kids can hang out in non-creepy ways, and literature doesn’t always have “erotic undertones.” Seymour is drawn to the innocence and naivete of children because his experiences in World War II have made him disillusioned with the world of adults, not to mention that talking to Sybills allows him to indulge in his creative side. . Seymour makes up a great story about the life and behavior of banana fish, and is tickled pink, in a non-sexual way, when Sybil plays along. Unfortunately, he has trouble letting go of this prank when he returns to the hotel. Jokingly, he accuses the woman in the elevator of “looking” at her feet and, in a trick only an adult would do, the woman takes offense at her advances. The argument escalates until Seymour is genuinely angry instead of pretending to be angry, and the woman flees the elevator. Realizing that he no longer freezes with adults, Seymour loses hope of being happy and ends his life.

With so many “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” questions unanswered, it’s no wonder Salinger featured Seymour in four more stories, the biggest in the two-parter.[Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction].” In these two novels, Seymour’s devoted little brother, Buddy, takes on the challenge of putting Seymour in the role. The fact that his writing is often incoherent, disjointed, and impossible to follow suggests that perhaps we’re just not destined to know